


Compost

by rin0rourke



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Blood and Violence, M/M, Ritual Sacrifice, Torture, Unrequited Crush, repeat character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:57:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8441254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: Bunnymund knew the Spring Spirits worshiped him, that to them he is more than just a god of spring, he is Spring itself. He knew they would do anything for him, but he never imagined they'd do this...





	1. Cadaveric Ecosystem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [proser132](https://archiveofourown.org/users/proser132/gifts).



In the light of North’s fireplace Bunnymund worried his thumb against his index finger, where dirt from the recently dug grave still clung like a filthy secret. In spite of the ever dwindling time it had been something of a relief when the colors of the Aurora had blazed across the sky, so close to Easter, so close to that anticipated and dreaded time. The first full moon of spring, when Jack Frost’s corpse would be laid near one of the entrances to the warren.  
  


How many times had he buried Jack Frost?  
  


He honestly couldn’t remember, so many Easters had passed, time evaporating between them; he had counted once, when he had first begun to realize there would be no end, but those first few years were a blur of grief and guilt. He remembered the unusual harshness heralding in 1780, the saltwater harbors frozen so thick that the people were ferried across them in sleighs. He had worked hard on Easter that year, wanting to give the battle weary families a bit of warmth and hope in their time of war, and he remembered the storm, so sudden, so violent. He hadn’t let it get much further than the mountaintop he tracked the culprit to, but the potential in that blizzard had been staggering. It would have been worse than the brutal winter that should have been ending, and may have been what finally broke the spirits of the cold and starving American soldiers.  
  


He could still see Jack through the silver violence, looking as worn and starving as any of the young boys camped in Morristown boiling their leather shoes. The cold blue of his eyes had burned like the supergiants he had seen in his youth traversing the constellations.  
  


Aster felt a wiggle in his pack and pulled out the goog he had stowed away before starting on the grave. He hadn’t had lunch yet so he hadn’t been able to take a breath and destress with a little painting. The goog was docile - the early ones usually were - energetic but aimless and lacking personality. It was the later ones that developed the attitude. Feisty, mischievous little things, eager to explore and get into any trouble the warren had to offer. He had to develop an entirely new painting strategy to get through them all, as they rarely sat still in his hands anymore.  
  


But they settled down for the children, and that’s what was most important.  
  


It was why he needed the grave dug early this year: the equinox was tonight, and Easter not two more nights away. Days away. Bunny squinted at North’s globe, huge and bright and rotating slowly as he calculated the time zones. He would not have time to linger over Jack’s grave this year, and this sudden emergency only ate into what little he could spare. He busied himself painting the goog in his hand to ease the anxiety as he FELT the clock tick down; he hoped Jack understood the children came first. Hell at this point he’d settle for hoping the remains were not a complete mess this time, he didn’t want anything in his tunnels for the googies to track through. Plus the other consequences of leaving viscera in the warm humid clime until after Easter, but he just couldn’t risk falling behind.  
  


That first year there had hardly been anything left, hardly enough of him to recognize. His face, once so childlike, had been a mash of blood and caved in bone. Bunny had wept, some days in the quiet moments he still wept, but at that time he had crumbled to the ground in wracking sobs. Jack Frost was dead, and it was all his fault.  
  


His fault.  
  


He had known how devoted the spring spirits were to him, yet still he had gone and ran his mouth. Ranted and raged about some winter spirit, some Jack bleeding Frost, with his blizzards and his mockery, had almost ruined Easter. Had he thought it would end any other way? Spring was just as vicious, just as hungering as any other season, and they had no love for any frost.  
  


He hadn’t wanted to touch Jack then, so much blood, so many pieces; one or more of the spirits had begun to eat parts of him. Back then they hadn’t thought to bring Aster all of it, only what was left. If the face hadn’t been so beaten, and Bunny had hoped with all he was that it had been after Jack had died and that his death had been quick, they might have just brought him a severed head.  
  


Some days, the worst days, he wished they had.  
  


It had taken him yonks to clean up the mess, the smell of blood gagging him though few organs were left in the cavity of the gored belly and cracked ribcage, and there was no septic smell of the bowels or digestive system. Only the stink of raw meat. He was grateful for that as he wrapped the remains in a sheet and carried it, careful as he could, inside to bury it.  
  


He had apologized then, sorries falling from him like tears. He hadn’t asked for it, and Jack hadn’t deserved it, but it had happened. He had buried that first body deep in the warren beneath the spongey trunk of a sequoia tree, far from where he or anyone else would disturb it.  
  


He hadn’t thought Jack would welcome his company.  
  


Those days leading up to Easter had been tainted by that death. He had tried to bury it as he buried Jack, the pain and guilt and rage, bury it in paint and chocky, putting it out of his mind as best he could. Easter could not be postponed, even to grieve. When the big day was done he had smothered it in cleaning, then in organizing, then in prep work for next Easter.  
  


Only when he had run out of things to do, finding himself triple checking paint stores and micromanaging the ph balance of his garden soil did he admit that he was avoiding facing the truth. He got Jack Frost killed; horribly, possibly in great pain, and buried beneath a Redwood like compost.  
  


He couldn’t even find rage. The time to deflect the blame to the other spirits had passed with Easter. He was their leader, and he was the one with the grudge against Jack, he was responsible for the consequence.    
  


He remembered thinking he could correct that, that he could do that much. Desperate for closure, and to make some level of amends with the memory of a spirit he met only once. He had decided to call a meeting of his season, to let all the other spring spirits know that what they had done to Jack had been unacceptable. He had sworn he would make sure it never happened again, it had been the least he could do for Jack.  
  


The very least, as it turned out. Foolish, hopeful, naive. As if a few words from him would halt a millennia long feud between seasons: he had been like a parent calmly, rationally asking his warring children to not fight. He had assumed in his grief that the Spirits would know that they did wrong, that they, the kindly virtuous bearers of spring, would hold some empathy for their longtime enemy Winter. That they too had grieved the wasted life, even as they mistakenly believed such a horror necessary.  
  


When he set off to the North Pole then, as he had set off for it now, it had been as much to  give the drum to the other Guardians as to vent his grief and confess his guilt. In the few decades since joining them he had come to rely on their companionship and compassion. Even North's. They had understood the burden of his rule, and the mistakes one could so easily make when others took your words as law.  
  


It had been bloody hard to admit to his actions, but North had not objected to gathering the others. They had surprised him with their understanding; Earthlings always continued to surprise him. They had not blamed or accused him. He had been prepared to defend himself and been met with support. It was a fierce contrast to how he had been raised - even Sandy, a fellow remnant of the Golden Age where any transgressions were severely dealt with, offered him comfort. Their sympathies were hard to swallow when a young life had been violently destroyed in his name.  
  


And he would have eaten his old robes before admitting it, but when they offered to stand with him at the seasonal meeting he had been grateful, their solidarity and support strengthening his spirit and warming his heart. He didn't deserve them, not then and not now.  
  


Those had been the early days of the Guardians, and he had never had much interest in ruling his season. Easter was the most activity they had seen of him since the height of the Roman Empire, yet he had still been a distant and elusive creator god to them, one whose favor had been transferred to others. Standing with the Guardians, to them, must have been a betrayal.  
  


He had held the meeting after the summer solstice, when the Northern spring spirits were done for the year and the southern were still preparing. His warren was filled to overflow with the crowd, but his message overcame his antisocial nature. With his fellow Guardians at his back he had addressed the leaders, creators, and caretakers of his season. Making it clear that what had been done to Jack Frost was unacceptable, cruel, and not to be tolerated.  
  


He had not asked for those responsible to come forward, he knew what their excuses would be; the valiant, honorable spring spirits vanquishing the evil winter. No, he placed the blame on himself for painting that target on Jack’s back, even if no one else, including the Guardians, did so. That, he would come to realize, was his second mistake in this horror tragedy; by not seeking justice he had undermined his own message. Perhaps if he had been less accusatory, or more, the next years would not have happened. He had taken them all to task in the presence of his new mates, whom he held closer than his people of thousands of years. If he had admitted his own grief to his people, not just his friends, they may have understood his reasoning instead of resenting his words.  
  


Then came the most damning of all, the reappearance of the supposed victim.  
  


It began with goss among Tooth’s fairies, October swept across North America in a wildfire of changing leaves licking at the heels of a laughing, flying boy. Aster raced to confirm it, not daring to hope but unable to understand. The Appalachians were Jack’s territory since he inherited it from Pamola, with Deer and Wolf battling it out in the skies across the lowlands towards the coast. He had been so sure, but they had met only the once, the magical signature an acrid campfire taste in the back of his throat, and the corpse had been mangled to an unrecognizable mass of meat.  
  


So determined to not think of the possibility, but hoping, hoping, hoping as he ran full tilt to the head of the Autumn chill; he burst out of the ground right beneath the trees Jack danced through, a performer and painter making the forest his stage. Jack, alive and laughing among the fire colors of fall, leaves scattered by his entrance drifting back down as he barreled into Jack, unable to halt his momentum, slamming them both to the ground with a violence that jarred his bones.  
  


After their last encounter over Easter he couldn’t blame Jack for the utter fear on his face, though it sliced through Aster like the cold. He may have been happy, rapt from the relief at seeing the boy still existing despite unintentionally siccing his followers on him, but Jack only knew that the spring spirit he had fought with two years ago was back, ramming into him and knocking him out of the air.  
  


His eyes still burned like blue fire.  
  


Bunnymund scrambled back to give Jack space, but as soon as there was room the wind scooped the boy up and the both of them vanished into the sky in a spiral of caramel colored leaves. He was left looking at the trail of them, regret and relief a nauseous mixture churning in his gut.  
  


Bunny felt guilty for the relief; Jack had been whole and solid under him, face unmarred, breathing heavy and erratic. No blood, no stink of death and raw meat, just that smell of wood smoke and the discarded leaves swirling around them in the agitated wind. Some poor winter spirit had been mistaken for Frost and he’d have to find out who. Someone was buried in the warren beneath the redwood, after all, they deserved to be named, be known; someone could be missing him.  
  


He would approach the winter spirits he could tolerate after Easter, when neither of them were very busy. Maybe he would ask Jack, maybe he could do more than stare at him in awed relief as the boy’s fear mounted. Maybe he could actually manage to apologize, though how he’d be able to pull that off was a mystery to him. “Sorry for being crank at you for trying to wreck Easter, I didn’t mean to put a hit out on you, by the way another spirit died in your place, you wouldn’t happen to know the poor bloke, would you?”  
  


Wouldn’t that be one hell of an icebreaker?  
  


Still, he had made plans, he wanted to mend fences with Jack, get to know him. It had only been one blizzard, in one region. And who knew, maybe there was a reason behind it? Bunny doubted it, but he wouldn’t hold it against Jack if he made it snow just to make it snow. It was his nature. Sometimes Bunny started spring a little early in some places, because of Easter’s schedule that year or because he needed region specific plants.  
  


He had thought it might be nice, it had been centuries since he had dealt with a new winter spirit. He’d bring his freeze resistant chocolate creams. Jack looked young, surely he’d enjoy a chocolate. They’d do this meeting right, no tackling out of the air this time, and hopefully no snowstorms: just two spirits, having a normal sane conversation about misunderstandings and buried bodies.  
  


The first full moon of the Spring Equinox put all of that right out of his mind. Six days before Easter Aster found blood in his tunnels.  
  



	2. Active Decay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Frost is fairly energetic for a dead person.

They had obviously tried to drag the corpse in as far as they could, before the wards became unbearable. It wasn’t as beaten as the last: the torso was gored, intestines looped and tangled like giant wet gummy worms down its legs, his legs. Jack’s legs. His face was smashed on one side like a dropped soft-boiled goog, but the other side was strikingly unmarred and it was unmistakably Jack Frost.

He had spent too long picturing that youthful face, so full of fear beneath him, to mistake it. Aster had not taken this new offering well. Two deaths now because of him. Two innocent spirits dead and brutalized and it was his fault.

He hadn’t used a sheet that time; he couldn’t bear to feel disgust at the gore when he had held this body not six months before. What right did he have to be disturbed when Jack would never be anything again? He piled the intestines on Jack’s stomach and lifted him, his head lolled back and to the right. From that angle Aster could have pretended the boy was asleep. Could have convinced himself that he had found a limp, waxy skinned winter spirit hibernating in his tunnels. He’d just carry him someplace safe and let him sleep until summer passed.

Until Jack’s mashed brain fell at Aster’s feet with a sick wet plop like chewed citrus pulp. He collapsed then, holding Jack to him and keening. He hadn’t wanted this, had never wanted this.

He planted a red maple above Jack this time, remembering the autumn leaves’ bold colors as they welcomed the coming winter Jack promised. He couldn’t forget the way Jack had laughed, dodging branches as he danced through the forest, every tree he passed taking on that faint kiss of sunset. The images wouldn’t leave him, haunted him like a ghost. Those careless, graceful movements before he knocked into Aster and that smile had turned to shock. The raw terror on that bright face had sickened him: he had caused that fear, and now there was no way to amend it, just as there had been no way to stop his momentum, no way to keep from crashing into Jack and taking him down.

When Jack had fled he hadn’t tried to follow, not then. He had hunched there, under the changing foliage and wishing he had choked out the fumbled apology when he had been able, instead of planting it in the grave with each layer of soil.

He hadn’t the time to dwell on regret or might-have-beens or even grief. Easter was quickly upon him and the bulk of the googs were blooming. They were bright, active, eager things and had taken all his concentration to corral and color. It had been a hard Easter. He should have realized then something was wrong, but had blamed frustration and fatigue for his fumbling, not the googies themselves.

Then - then he found his rage.

The days leading up to Easter had been tainted by Jack’s death, the days after had been filled with plans to hunt down his killers. Obviously he had not been clear enough the first time. That would change.

He had gone straight to North, so sure that the boisterous old Cossack would be eager for a bit of heroics. North had taken one squizz at him and manhandled him into a spare room with tucker and a bath. He hadn’t realized he’d still been coated in the blood and dirt from Jack’s burial. He had finished his Easter run looking like he was the one lying in a grave.

He had filled North in on the new developments as they sat by the fire in the room. Finding Jack alive, then finding him dead.

Why would they have dragged him back to the Warren after he had specifically told them he did not appreciate or approve of them bringing him their kills, much less the corpses of the spirits he had minor dust ups or arguments with?

North had volunteered some explanations. Bunnymund hated to admit it, but though he had the strength in years and knowledge he was introverted and antisocial by nature, while North had taken to leadership early in life. Of the three of them that ruled, North was the most skilled and experienced, and Bunnymund took his advice to heart.

North worried that they had stepped too harshly on the pride of Spring spirits when they had called them all out in the Warren. The Guardians were a new group, a Pantheon in the eyes of the old Gods, and though Bunny and Toothiana were well known and respected they had younger members, human members, who were making declarations to old and powerful spirits. The old gods thought nothing of death, and this could have been a response to the perceived insult. The Guardians had been there as a show of solidarity with Bunnymund, but the others would have misinterpreted their meaning as declaring their intention to police the spiritual world. It was a paranoia the other gods and spirits nursed since they had been formed, that the Guardians of Childhood would move beyond merely protecting the children and guiding them through influence. Childhood indoctrination was key in keeping many spirits alive and the Guardians walked a fragile line between preservation of innocence and destruction of culture.

There was also the chance the spirits believed Bunny was protecting them. Asking them not to go after his enemies because he thought they couldn’t handle it. They could want to prove themselves strong enough to be relied upon by their leader who had forsaken them and now stood with strangers.

Then there were the ones to which honor was the end all be all of existence, who no matter what Bunny said would never, could never allow any slight against him stand.

Aster had been reclusive too long. He’d forgotten or didn’t notice how loved and respected he was, he is. North had faced his own share of Spring’s wrath over his attitude with Bunny - it was only his familiarity and camaraderie with Aster that afforded him protection from the full force of it. Regardless he, too, had fended off attacks. Spring is protective of Aster, devoted to Aster, they worship him as the humans worship them, and only now with the magic of the Guardians tying them all to the children’s belief do they risk losing him. When Jack endangered Easter he had endangered Aster’s life, and the very existence of Spring.

Jack had threatened them all, and the Spring spirits would never let that stand. North advised Aster to make it clear, with no uncertainty, that any attack on Easter would not be an attack on Spring itself, and that such a reaction to minor insults would not be tolerated, otherwise this would continue to happen as more and more children came to celebrate Easter and Bunny’s holiday extended further into other spirit’s territories.

Aster is their god and their king, whether he wanted to be or not, and he needed to make an example of this.

He realized then the weight in his words and actions, and understood the full meaning of his complaints against Jack. He had believed himself blowing off steam, unloading on casual acquaintances, complaining about the job as he had come to enjoy doing with his fellow Guardians after a busy holiday season. He had thought the spirits had just taken it too seriously, taken it too far; he had accepted the blame but not the responsibility. He had left Jack to his life, knowing the spirits were out for his blood, believing his command not to attack had been heard. But he had painted Jack as a threat to Spring, and had not bothered to protect or warn him after discovering him alive.

Now he had two corpses in his warren, and if he did not handle this carefully he could start a full hunt for Winter Spirits. The scheduled end of the Little Ice Age was approaching, leaving many of them defenseless and weak. They wouldn’t survive a war with Spring.

“Politics.” He hissed and downed his glass. North hummed in agreement. This was why he left Rome to fall. Fucking politics.

They would spend the remaining months of spring investigating Jack’s murder, not a manhunt or a quest for revenge, but a call for Justice. Aster, with the help of the Guardians, approached the task with tact and care. In the end he held twelve spirits responsible, nine for the unnamed spirit mauled in Jack’s stead and three for Jack himself.

The trial had been public, cross seasonal and presided over by a handful of the older gods still maintaining influence in the wake of the Christian wars against their belief. He had stepped back and let them handle the prosecution and sentencing, a risk but a necessary one. He had needed to include the more powerful and prominent members of the spiritual world, and make it clear this was not an in-house event, but an inter-seasonal incident capable of inciting war. The Guardians stood there as his friends, but they were not a unit when he described how he and Jack had faced off, and his frustration with his new Holiday as well as his duties as Avatar of Spring in regions where younger spirits did not know him. He wanted to hold those responsible for the deaths of the two winter spirits, but he needed to demonstrate that the Guardians did not rule Spring. He did.

The event had been far more hassle than a vicious fight would have been, and less satisfying, but he believed he was protecting the other winter spirits, or any other person of legend who he might cross words with down the line, and that was more important than his personal needs.

He never got the chance to see if it worked, all that effort, all that bureaucracy wasted. Come Autumn Jack was back in America.

Sanderson had visited him late in the afternoon. It had shocked him - he hadn’t seen Sandy in the middle of the day in yonks. The reasons for such a visit were even more surprising, and he raced to confirm it, outpacing even Sandy's own flight.

Some other winter spirit he decided, someone taking over Jack's territory now that he was gone. It's what spring did, assign a new caregiver to a forest when its guardian faded out. He couldn't blame a newly assigned spirit for wanting to slide into the name and legend of the one they replaced, but it was still in bad taste. Jack had died violently, Bunnymund had been responsible, and unless this new sprite had a damn good reason for taking up the role he was going to have a few things to say to them.

He popped out in another forest, far more carefully than the last time, not willing to repeat his literal run in with his target. He scented the air for what he was coming to recognize as Jack's winter magic; the woodsmoke taste struck a chord of familiarity and comfort in him. He was a creature of springtime but the smell reminded him of warmth and shelter from the cold.

The first spirit had smelled like this too, under the blood. Perhaps that was the reason for the mistaken identity that led to his death in Jack's place? It was not a flavor of magic Bunnymund had ever known, and now three winter spirits have displayed it. Whoever it was going around calling themselves Jack Frost at least had the thought to try to smell like him. Still, Bunnymund wasn't going to let this disrespect go unquestioned.

He followed the scent through the forest, the plants moving for him as he passed through. Even close to dormancy they acknowledged his rule. If only the spirits looking after them had such innocent admiration, instead of blind worship. He studied the patterns of frost along their stems and leaves, admiring the whorls and flares, so different from the jagged fans of most frost ferns - and on a tree to boot! He had only seen frost come close on the windows of the North Pole, but none quite so elegant. He could admire the skill and talent needed for such a thing.

The shock he got, when he passed through the last layer of underbrush between him and the one he sought, the flare of winter magic bright and crisp as the first morning of Autumn, was terrible. Jack Frost floated like a ghost in the moonlight, drifting lazily past the tents of a hunter's camp, down deer paths between thick foliage and over the neighboring grassy meadow until every dewdrop was a glittering frozen jewel.

He hadn't understood: he had seen Jack himself, impossible to mistake, he had held Jack's limp corpse and sobbed over his grave, he had washed Jack's blood from his fur and sought justice from his season. How was Jack back in America, gifting a wooded mountainside with an early morning frost?

Aster had barely managed to breathe his name before Jack was above the canopy, flying straight and fast into the night sky, not once looking back.


	3. Biodegredation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> out of the past and towards the future.

Biodegredation

Bunny had stared up into that sky, completely lost.

He had wanted to follow, he had, but how would Jack have reacted? He remembered the fear so open on Jack's face the time they met among the leaves, he'd be lying if he said it didn't plague him, overlaying the images of the battered and gored body. He longed for the millenia when he had only slept once a year, if only to avoid the dreams.

No, Jack would not welcome his company, but maybe the Sandman… he hadn’t been that far behind, and if anyone could calm a frightened spirit it was Sandy. Sandy would find out how Jack could still be alive when Bunnymund had buried him himself.

And Bunny? Bunny could avoid seeing that youthful face twisted in horror for just that much longer.

Sandy, understanding, had pursued Jack alone.

Bunny had stayed where he was, wandering the silver laced meadow beyond the trees, Jack's horrified face stuck in his mind. 

At least dead he had looked peaceful.

If he had gone after Jack would he have looked at him like that again? Like Aster was the root of all his fears? 

Wasn’t he?

Was he not the reason Jack had been bloodied and brutalized and left on his own doorstep? Because there was no mistaken identity, not this time, Aster had carried him, gentle as a sleeping child,to his grave. Jack Frost laid in the Warren beneath a sapling Maple just sprouting it's first red leaves. He had gazed into that waxen face and mourned the lost light of those blue suns, even when he had known of them had been burning with fury and fear.

Yet there had been no explanation for what he saw.

He touched a paw to an ice sheathed tree, the glitter of frost like sugar glaze beneath his finger, and felt the first stirrings of doubt expand its roots within him since he had breached the tree line. Not for the corpse in the Warren, but for that figure in the moonlight.

How could he be sure it was Jack? He had not seen the face though yes from the distance they had looked alike, the same white hair, the same cape and blouse he had seen on Jack the two times they had met before, and stained red on the corpse; but the first body had been similarly dressed.

Jack didn't hold the monopoly on undyed leather and homespun blouses, nor wooden shepherds crooks.

The more he wandered the glittering field the more he doubted his own eyes. Sure that it had been some other winter spirit, as he had assumed when Sandy brought him the news, before the image of him, the cape and the staff and those perplexing bare feet, had alarmed him. Someone was taking over Jack’s territory, that was all this was. It was what Spring did, assign a new spirit to a forest or glade when the old caretaker faded out. 

He couldn't blame a newly appointed frost spirit for fleeing when they were replacing someone who had died so violently. Emotions had a way of dictating actions. Had he not raced there because he had been offended some was going around pretending to be Jack Frost? And the first thing he had done was stand - ha ha - frozen in place because of white hair and a curly stick.

He would still have to talk to this new sprite, it was in very poor taste to dress up as a murder victim. As Aster’s murder victim. Like it or not Bunnymund would never think of Jack as anything other than his, not when he had two trees in the Warren dedicated to the poor boy.

He studied the frost patterns, admiring the whorls and flares, so different from the jagged edges most frost fans had. They looked as soft and feathery as the ferns growing in his Warren, and on a tree to boot! Bunnymund could admire the skill and talent needed for such a thing.

He wondered if Jack would have been impressed with it, and considered planting live ferns around the maple parking Jack’s grave. He’d ask the new frost sprite’s opinion too, if Sandy calmed him down enough to come back and talk.

But Sandy hadn’t caught the sprite, would never catch him, no matter how he tried. North and Tooth would make similar attempts in the coming years, all unsuccessful, but Bunny was greatful still. 

They had never given up hope, even when Bunny himself had.

Bunnymund would never seek out a Jack sighting again. Not after… no he couldn’t face that again. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Hope was a fragile thing, and when weeks before Easter he had found another body, whole and perfect and impossible to deny as Jack, it had near broken him. Jack had been bound to a tree just outside a tunnel entrance, and Bunny had been forced to accept the truth as he cut back the monstrous vines that had strangled him. How could he deny it, standing in the warren, agonizing over where to bury him knowing that a plant had been what had killed him? He had to accept it, or doubt his own sanity. Accept that Jack would return. 

It should have brought him comfort, but all he could see think of was what followed. 

No, no he couldn’t face Jack after that, with that certainty looming above them.

Perhaps that was why Jack ran. Unable to face the same fate.

He hadn’t told the Guardians about the body, wouldn't confide in them again for another five years. Not until, prompted by his disappearance mid Easter run, when they found him caught in a mental breakdown, holding vigil over jack’s corpse. So sure, so suddenly sure that if he just watched long enough, if he tended to Jack instead of discarding the body, he could be there when Jack resurrected. 

It had been a long, exhausting argument with his friends, one that had culminated in his house arrest at the Pole. He understood, given time to reflect, his friend’s alarm at finding him obsessively guarding a corpse, but at the time the theory he had come to on his Easter run had been so strong, so certain. Mostly, he admitted, it was a need to do something. To feel as if his actions could, somehow, have some benefit. He started all this, he had to do something other than bury him. He was Guardian of Hope, last of the Pooka, he had shaped the planet with his actions, his role could not simply be grave digger.

But senseless violence… it didn’t need to have a reason… and he didn’t need to have a role. That they left Jack for him was an… offering. His place in the cruelty was that of a distant god. 

After that he had stopped memorializing the graves. 

He still marked them, but with stones, boulders he cleared from ground he wanted to plant, tunnels he wanted to dig. He began to burry Jack in a plot, row after row of boulders dotting a valley in his warren. A mass grave for one. 

He had never intended for anything but moss to grow in the field, but when his googie plants had taken to clinging to the gravestones he couldn’t bring himself to transplant them. Let them grow, he thought as he carved into the rock, pookan symbols of protection, good will, and well wishes, let him tend to Jack’s grave in this one way. Perhaps, just maybe, one day he could find if not peace… then balance. Balance in this new tradition of Winter passing into Spring.

He didn’t think he ever would but… he had to hope.

He never found out how it all started, this continuous cycle of death and reappearance, but he did know this: that he was the cause of it, and that he couldn’t stop it. 

The Guardians, his friends, had tried to help, they had done everything in their power to get it all to end. They had spoken up, had fought, had tried so hard for so very long to protect the boy… but it always ended the same.

Jack Frost, or whatever was left of him, on Bunny’s doorstep.

~*~

The ground lurched under him and he sprang back, crouched and ready to fight, the wriggling googie in his hand like a weapon. Tooth looked at him unimpressed, hand outstretched where she had tapped him.

“Sorry Tooth,” he straightened and willed his heart back to a steady beat, “little on edge.”

“I know Bunny.” She flew closer again, gripping him tight around the shoulders, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to knock you off balance.”

It said something, that she had even been able to. “S’my fault for leaning against a ruddy pillair.” He rolled his shoulders and gave himself a little shake while Tooth was distracted rattling off a barrage of orders to her fairies. “Any idea what this shindig is about?”

“No clue,” she spared him between tasks, “but I spotted Sandy on the horizon when I came in, he’ll be here-” A golden airplane scattered against the ceiling of the Globe Room and Sandy descended among the sparkle. “-Soon.” She pat Bunny’s shoulder and shared an amused look with him over the timing before firing off more instructions at her girls. 

North marched over to offer greetings, but Sandy was as pleased as the rest of them and set to lecturing. 

“I know, I know,” North placated, “but obviously I would not have called you all here if it was not important.” 

Irritated as they were, he was right. The Aurora wasn’t something North messed around with. Tooth had to wave her girls quiet as they all focused on what he had to say.

“The Boogie Man was here,” North announced and the name was like a bomb of alarm among them. Bunny could feel the anxiety and frustration inside him expand out in an explosion of fury. “At the Pole.”

“Pitch?” Tooth demanded. “You saw Pitch Black? Here? How is that even possible?” She turned to Bunny, who was trying not to crush the poor goog in his clenched fists.

“It’s not.” He managed through grit teeth and carefully set the goog on its little legs where it tottered away for the elves to chase. “We made those wards ourselves North.”

“You think I do not know? That is why I called! If Pitch could get in here, he could get in eleswhere.” He looked at each of theme seriously, “We are all vulnerable, my friends.”

“To what?” Bunny asked, Anxiety twisting into confusion into frustration. “What did he do? What could he do?”

“He interfered with Globe!” North declared, and Bunnymund threw his hands up.

“Well of course! Alert the Guardians, Santa has a glitch in his systems.”

“It was no ordinary glitch!” North insisted, “The yeti could have fixed that themselves. They could not, I came to Investigate. That’s when I saw it.” North tried to explain, hands gesturing wildly, “First there was this... sand, black sand, covering the globe.”

“Sand?” Banny shared a look with Tooth and Sandy behind North’s back. “Hold on-”

“Then,” North’s hands swept out, cutting Bunny off, “a shadow!”

“I thought you said you **SAW** Pitch?”

“Well…” North rubbed the back of his neck, the sudden sheepishness edging Bunny’s frustration over into anger, “not exactly.”

“What do you mean by ‘exactly?” Bunny demanded, his previous anxiety and frustration not mixing well with the irritation he felt at North’s dramatics. He breathed very carefully through his nose and looked to the others for help, getting only a shrug and question mark from Sandy, Tooth was trying to edge a few instructions out to her girls while they were busy.

Sand. North drug him away from Jack’s grave for Sand.

“It was **HIS** shadow in the sand. And laughter. Pitch’s laughter.” North gave them all a wild eyed beseeching look. “You remember his laugh? It was Pitch’s laugh.”

“North,” Bunny smoothed a paw down his ears and rubbed the tension in his neck, trying for patience. “It is three days before Easter. You **KNOW** what I have to deal with before Easter.” “The Full moon is **TONIGHT**.”

“I know Bunny,” North shot back. “Do you think I would treat such a thing lightly?” 

He didn’t, no, but it was hard to hold onto that faith when he stood there listening to the old bandit ramble on about shadow sand. Bunny spun away with a scoff, Sandy had drifted off to enjoy the refreshments and Tooth had completely abandoned any attempt at splitting attention between them and her girls. “Can ye believe this?” he asked of her, and she spared a breath to huff and shrug at him between orders. “Really? **No** Backup?”

“Sorry,” she bobbed in the air like a bubble of sarcasm, “not all of us work one night a year. Right Sandy?’ She barely glanced his way to catch his nob before firing off at her girls again.

“This is big! Pitch is up to something!” North insisted, a little desperately now that the others had obviously dismissed his warnings. “I can feel it,” he grabbed his gut, “in my _belly_.” 

“Ye pulled me away-” Bunny spun back to North and stepped right into one of Sandy’s images, “Really mate? Ye gotta take up the whole room?” He snapped and Sandy blew steam out his ears in aggravation. “Sorry,” he rubbed at his eyes and blew out a breath of his own, guilt at having lost his temper, at **SANDY** of all people, piling onto the rest of his emotional drama. “Sorry I’m just… ye know how it gets.”

“Bunny,” North clapped a firm hand on his shoulder, turning him from Sandy and looking him in the eyes, all serious now, “we know, which is why I do not call you lightly.”

Bunny tried, really tried to not lose his temper. It was right there, beneath his breastbone, just waiting for a target. At home he could focus his anxiety, his anticipation and dread on his Easter prep. Here he could only think of what Jack was doing, if he was already dead or fighting for his life at the very moment. If somewhere out in the world he was suffering in Bunnymund’s name. If, when he returned to the warren, it would be to find it defiled with murder. “Pitch went out with the dark ages, we made sure of that.” 

No fearlings, no nightmare pirates, just a sad broken shell of a man parents used to keep kids in their room past bedtime. 

“If it **was** him that gave ye the shadow puppet show, it's just to get yer back up. He’s popped up to sneer at all a`us over the years. He’s got nothin left we gotta worry about.”

“Look, I KNOW it was him,” North persisted, “if he could get into the Pole than this is serious situation.”

“Ye want a serious situation?” He got into North’s face, met him wild eye for wild eye and let loose the bile backlogged in his throat. “I got two days to clean blood and viscera out of me tunnels before ten billion eggs leave little red footprints up and down every-”

His rant was cut off by the high discordant chime of an elf bell, he looked down and around his feet to see if the little army had come to North’s defence, the little buggers could bite. What he saw was Sandy, face pinched in annoyance, holding one of the elves by its pointed outfit. Once he had their attention he released the poor thing to wobble noisily away and very carefully, with large clear images, signed “MOON.” and “Behind You.”

And sure enough, because Bunny’s life was just one poorly timed emotional outburst after another, there was the moon, big and bright and watching their entire argument through the skylight. Just bloody perfect. What a time to lose his temper.

“Ah! Man in Moon!” North was, of course, ecstatic and smug at once. “Sandy, why didn’t you say something?” 

Sandy’s look could boil the arctic. Bunny was at least somewhat cheered he wasn’t the only one ready to blow his lid. North however just turned back to greet Manny. 

“It’s been a long time old friend!”

Long indeed, hundreds of years. Bunnymund didn’t mind the silence, he spent more time under the ground than under the stars, but he wasn’t the only one to notice the loss of sentient moonbeams. Just because they couldn’t video chat after the final battle on the moon didn’t excuse the lack of contact. He could have used another eye in the sky for Jack. 

A moonbeam danced through the skylight, globular and whimsical as he remembered as it shed its light onto the workshop’s floor, transmitting Manny’s message. Moonbeams were simple beings though, with little ability to communicate. They relied, ironically enough, on the shadows in the room to create their pictures. 

The picture was Pitch.

North, smug bastard, just smirked and gave his gut a pat. “What must we do?” he asked Manny and the moonbeam weaved its way towards the center of the platform, where their iconic symbols were carved into the wood flooring,concealing something more precious and powerful waited.

At the moonbeam’s touch their crest depressed and slid back, allowing the object waiting within to rise. Infused with moonlight the scintillating crystal radiated out a blue brilliance not unlike Jack’s eyes. Bunny felt his own gut clench.

“Uh, guys?” Tooth darted around excited, “You know what this means?”

Hopefully not what he was guessing. Manny couldn’t think that… couldn’t honestly be considering...

“He is choosing a new Guardian.” North breathed in awe.

No, nope, not happening. Bunnymund had already dealt with too many people, half of which were who knew where right now. He was at capacity with the three he had somehow managed to keep close. “Why the blazes would he do that?”

“Manny must think we need help.” He was apparently alone in his objections, of course he was, when was he not? North looked positively ecstatic over the possibility.

“Since when do **WE** need help?” Bunnymund appealed to logic, “We **ARE** the help.” How much stronger a team did you need? Bunnymund terraformed the ruddy **PLANET** , North bent space-time for fun, Tooth could multiply millions of times over, and Sandy could craft any conceivable object to pummel you with. Unless MiM was reeling in Mother Nature, and wouldn’t that have been a useful thing during this whole Seasonal Death Ritual, they were bloody well set in the powerhouse department.

“Oooh, who do you think it will be?” Tooth was all a wiggle with enthusiasm, and Sandy readily supplied suggestions. “Oh, yes! Maybe the Leprechaun!” 

“That yabbo doesn’t even like kids,” Bunny steamed, 

“If Manny is picking them,” North offered, “the must bring something we lack, or strengthen our own positions, as your mice do Toothy, or the Yeti.”

“Right, they gotta at least bring something t’the group. Right?” The person chosen didn’t particularly need to be a big name already, like the Leprechaun or Valentine, most of the Guardians hadn’t been. No, they just needed to embody something, be centered around some core characteristic that inspired people. **GIVE** them something. Someone like the May Queen or Befana or...

“Strewth.” He pinched his eyes and tried to erase the very thought. “Please not the Groundhog, just… **PLEASE** not the Groundhog.” The last thing he needed was that self righteous meteorologist nipping at his heels about the whole debacle with-”

“Jack Frost.”

Bunny’s head snapped up, air strangled in his throat. “No.”

“Ah, well,” Tooth looked delighted, “that’s one way to solve a problem.”

“I take it back.” Bunny tried to breathe around the sudden explosion of **RAGE** in his ribcage at the sheer… balls of such a suggestion. He wanted to take the crystal and chuck it right at the Man in the Moon’s stupid smiling face. “I take it all back, the Groundhog’s fine, Emily Jane is fine, the good for nothing Leprechaun is fine. Anybody,” his voice tried to crack and he choked it down, “anybody else.”

“Bunny.” North tried to argue, but it was pointless. It was all pointless.

“Its three days to Easter!” He raged, and his throat burned from the shout like he’d just spewed actual fire. “The full moon is tonight and he wants us to-” they were there, as sudden as a full body tackle. North, Tooth, Sandy, pressed against him in an embrace that felt like a lifeline and shackles and a punch all at once. 

They held him as the emotions seemed to strike against each other in a clash of fury,grief and targetless frustration.

“Isn’t it enough I bury him?” This time when his voice splintered he let it, let it choke out the sob lodged in his throat since the image materialized in the crystal. Jack Frost, whole and smiling before him while for all they knew he was at this moment being hunted. Being hurt. 

“We’ll find him.” North pulled back, took Bunny by the shoulders to look him dead in the eye, “This year, and every year from here on, we stop it. They won’t hurt a Guardian, they wouldn’t dare.”

“But how North?” Tooth asked and Sandy displayed a snowflake swirling around the Earth.

“They’re right,” Bunny swallowed, “he don’t exactly sit still for very long.”

“That is where you are wrong my friends.” North assured, and grinning gave Bunny a good solid pat to his bicep before marching towards the Globe. “Jack is on Naughty list, every year! Heh,” he shook his head, mustache quivering in a huffed laugh, “he holds record. And Santa,” he turned back to the others with a wicked grin, hand on a lever not dissimilar to the Aurora, “he knows where you are sleeping.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a new computer! No more writing things on my phone! and boy, do I have a few notebooks worth of material I need to type up, but for now, here's a Halloween fic, thanks much to the help of the lovely and talented Proser132.


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